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MS has been doing their usual patent FUD, while Novell is sprouting how wonderful interoperability is. Same agreement, two different views. Now that's odd. Typically, you'd expect all parties involved in an agreement to be singing the same tune. So what's going on here? Well, someone points out the obvious.

Over two years ago, Microsoft and Novell signed an interoperability deal. Part of this agreement was a patent deal that suggested that Linux infringed on Microsoft's IP. Since then, Microsoft has signed a number more of these deals with various companies, but the Novell one is still the most famous.

In November of 2006, Microsoft rocked the Linux world by signing a landmark patent and interoperability agreement with Novell. According to the two partners, it's an agreement that today, two and half years later is still paying off, even during the current recession.

Seeing some news during the usual "surfing" the Internet, I had a wonderful conversation with Ioakim, which transformed into a growing concern about "what happens with the interoperability"? Just before 1 month, at NTUA a Meeting on Interoperability was held with the support of the Greek Microsoft Innovation Centre in cooperation with the Greek Interoperability Center and Oracle Greece.

When Linspire 6.0 is released next month, it will include the fruits of the recently announced marriage between Linspire and Microsoft. Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony says he has been in talks with Microsoft for about a year and a half before reaching an agreement.

Microsoft has now posted the revised licenses for interoperability as a result of the EU antitrust agreement. Microsoft calls them the Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program License Agreements for Development and Product Distribution (WSPP Development Agreements). I don't know why they can't come up with better names. Probably for the same reason the Zune is brown.

"...'This case is over and interoperability won. The European Court made clear that interoperability information should not be kept secret and the agreement shows that Microsoft saw no way to continue its obstruction of interoperability in this area. This establishes a standard which everyone will have to meet from now on,' summarizes Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)..."

"When Microsoft announced the first of its patent interoperability agreements with Novell in November 2006, one of the major claims made in favor of the patent covenant agreement was that it would give customers peace of mind and ensure that they didn’t have to worry about issues such as intellectual property infringement."

A global survey of open-source enterprise users of Alfresco software has found that deployments of Red Hat Linux have grown twice as fast as those for Novell SUSE Linux since Novell signed its controversial patent and interoperability agreement with Microsoft in November 2006.

Even though patent talks between Microsoft and Red Hat broke down last year before Microsoft went on to sign a technical collaboration and patent indemnity deal with Novell, Red Hat is still willing to work with the Redmond software maker on the interoperability front.